Sen. Rand Paul predicts that House Speaker Paul Ryan will be forced to pull the American Health Care Act (AHCA) BEFORE it’s scheduled vote on Thursday. Why? Paul is confident the bill won’t receive the required number of votes. Do you agree?

By Matthew Boyle

The AHCA has been dubbed “Obamacare Lite” by Paul — a leading conservative critic of the plan — and by other conservatives as “RyanCare,” “RINO-Care,” and “Obamacare 2.0,” since the bill does not actually fully repeal Obamacare and keeps many of the main structures that the now-former President Barack Obama installed in the healthcare system. It has come under intense scrutiny from both sides of the Republican Party — moderates and conservatives are lining up against the bill — and Ryan, despite publicly projecting confidence, cannot find the necessary 216 votes to pass the legislation.

Paul, one of the leading senators out of more than a dozen Republicans in the upper chamber criticizing the bill there, told Breitbart News in this exclusive interview he believes there are at least 35 House Republicans ready to vote against the bill in its current form. And he predicted that, unless some major changes come to the legislation between now and the scheduled vote on Thursday, Ryan will need to withdraw the bill and Republicans will have to start from scratch with a new bill and a new strategy on Obamacare.

Paul said in the in-person interview at his U.S. Senate office in the Russell Senate Office Building:

I think there’s easily 35 no votes right now so unless something happens in the next 24 hours, I would predict they pull the bill and start over. I think if conservatives stick together, they will have earned a seat at the table where real negotiation to make this bill an acceptable bill will happen. But it’s interesting what conservatives are doing to change the debate. We went from keeping the Obamacare taxes for a year—hundreds of billions of dollars—but they’re coming towards us because we’re standing firm. So we have to stick together, and if we do stick together there will be a real negotiation on this. The main goal I have is not to pass something that does not fix the situation. If a year from now, insurance rates and premiums are still going through the roof and it’s now a Republican plan it will be a disservice to the president and all of us if we pass something that doesn’t work.

There is plenty of reason to believe that Paul is correct in predicting Ryan does not have the votes to pass this legislation and will need to pull the bill to start over. Despite overtures from President Donald Trump, the House Freedom Caucus members — and particularly its chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) — remain steadfastly opposed to the bill.

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House GOP leadership made some last minute changes, too, which Paul — in his interview with Breitbart News — flatly said “no,” were not enough to get the bill passed. Regarding those changed, Paul said:

If you keep all the insurance mandates, and you keep subsidizing insurance, basically it’s Obamacare Lite. So I think it’s still Obamacare Lite. The modifications, some are going in the right direction, but they actually expanded some of the subsidies. So one of the new things about it is it’s actually $75 billion more in subsidies. So, I think they’re stuck trying to split the baby. They’re trying to give conservatives a few token changes. And they’re trying to give the moderates more subsidies.